I’m a bit out of the loop this week. My family and I are in the process of moving to a new house that we’ve been building over the past 4 years. Meanwhile, Blizzcon has sucked up some Stardockians.
Charles, who has posted on occasion, had a baby (well technically his wife) this past week. Scott (Boogiebac) also had a daughter a few weeks ago and had this week off to help out at home.
Stardockians: Breeding at a rapid pace.
Cari and Jesse are off this week recovering from “The Summer of no vacation).
Paul (Mormegil) is in Colorado this week.
It’s like a ghost town this past week.
And yet, v1.1 continues apace as Toby mentioned earlier. A lot of the underlying systems are in place, it’s now a matter of content. The new user interface got in this week which should vastly improve the ease of getting around with your units (and making it a lot more friendly to new players).
The new economic system got in this past week as well. People generate income (and modders can tweak how much or how little you get). This gives players a reason to have fewer, better cities since population means money. Population also now used explicitly for city improvements and other things. So you can, for instance, build as many workshops as you want or as many studies as you want as long as you have the people to staff them. How you choose to use your population becomes one of those “interesting choices”.
I didn’t get to work on the AI but I can show you what I’ve been doing in general with the AI in terms of making it multithreaded:
The art team has been working on content, content, content. New creatures, new special units, new spell effects, new special ability effects.
We originally intended to bring out v1.1 this next Thursday but with Kael joining us on November 1st, we decided that v1.1 is a good opportunity to do the hand off. So we plan to do a public beta the first week of November and then release the final v1.1 shortly after and then get a demo out there.
Appreciate update, video was interesting. Please keep doing this.
Some suggestions for the future videos:
1. Get better microphone, ideally invest into studio microphone and high-end sound card to do your sound.
2. Plan your speaking point a bit better to avoid redundant repetitions
3. Provide more 'insider' examples
4. Show us something that we would not normally see while playing game, like your developer tools and so on...
Here is good example for you:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fWtpTu9gB20&feature=player_embedded
Yeah, more vids plz! Perhaps of some new creatures fighting it off in tactical combat...
Great Stuff
This post makes me fully buy-in to Stardock. I know it's weird to actually approve of something in a forum post, but this makes me confident that the dev team are listening closely to the feedback from the fans/customers, and acting on it.
Do you really think it's needed? I don't think it will make meaningful difference. The voice is good enough. I actually didn't think about any of it's flaws until I read your post. Does everything need to be perfect, even if it's a few minutes long video you watch only once?
These are exciting changes. With all of the new disincentives to city-spam, will Merchants still cost food? This was a puzzling feature.
I gotta keep asking. Please, please please add the ability to invert camera X and Y. Inverting camera x and y is what I would like, and the thing I would like is to be able to invert camera X and Y. Z shall not be considered, nor shall the number 5 play into it. X and Y, baby, X and Y.
Thank you.
x and y
Brad, thanks for the update.
Out of curiosity, will it be possible to mod our own AIs? That would give us much more variety in playing in single player mode.
Craig
Do we have an eta on 1.1? not trying to rush just wondering.
Hope they put it through some open beta before just releasing it, might help get the game some better word of mouth, then get a good demo out. I can wait, I want it well done.
I didn't really know where to stand on this game because I wasn't sure how much was due. I think the game needs various fleshing out, so hearing about this 1.1 update is great news for me. If after that update this game is as good as I'm hoping, I promise to praise you on various big gaming forums on the interwebs. It's already an "OK" game, and it's extremely promising, but I find that it's lacking some oompf and some important content. I think if you can get that stuff added, while managing to improve things like the turn time and stuff, then this could end up as a real classic.
Yes! This one, please. Should be easy to do and I can avoid having my brain scrambled.
Love the Ideas in the update and everything. Thanks for all your hard work Any Chance we'll get a real manual to go along with update? I find myself wanting to play this game but the UI really leaves alot to be desired.
Call me Old fashioned but I actually like to read a Manual and know basicly what all the Buttons do and what all the pretty little little icons mean before I play... I admit I don't like to explore or just push a button to see what happens I would rather spend my time thinking about how to beat the AL I freely admit I got spoiled on the Manuals of old..... (Yes, I guess I'm showing my Age.)
I have never been a big fan of Less is more when it comes to documentation. No matter how good an Interface is designed what seems clear to one, does mean it's clear to another person.
I think it is important to include the interesting choices in the character design, too. The character stats should be improved in version 1.1:
STR and DEX are very good balanced
CON should increase the base HP and a character should get CON / 5 HP per level after the first
INT should change the damage of spells (base damage x INT x 0.1)
WIS should change the spell resistance (base spell resistance x WIS x 0.1)
CHA should change the cost of units (base cost x CHA x 0.1)
That will be possible later on. Brad has mentioned it many times.
I'd much rather see charisma yield a decent leadership bonus in combat (as its primary function); something along the lines of +1 to hit for every point above 10, and +x to damage for every point above 12, for all troops on the field for which the unit with the highest charisma is the leader, where x is probably a big question of balance.
I think that is a great idea. CHA should change the damage of all standard units that fight with the character (base damage x CHA x 0.1)
That's a good start, I would like it to affect Morale, and then fix the morale system, so that Morale affects combat like that.
Thanks for the update, Frogboy, much appreciated.
You said the art team is delivering lots of content. Does that, by any chance, will include new and more sound effects? Maybe I'm a minority, but audio is pretty important for me, even in a strategy game. And since you aim to become the "spiritual successor of MoM" with Elemental, at least TRY to outdo Master Of Magic in terms of audio, especially SFX. The music is fine, fitting and unobtrusive, but what's there in terms of sound bits just sucks. Just a few nominal grunts, nearly no ambience and next to nothing in the spell effect department - that's pretty sad.
Movie 16 Candles.
The line is "Whats a hoppaning hot stuff?" from the Asian guy that's in Gung ho!
Edit: Heres the You tube clip.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KfTwTbXvR8Y
Brad, Sinji has a good point, these videos whilst great to keep us informed on things, relay could use being tuned up for general public realise. Not flaming, not trying to cause problems (and im hoping their are no major spelling issues here.. ) this is provided as hopefully constructive criticism inregards to many of the videos that have been posted.
But these videos are also how others will judge the game in some cases, you tube is where you can get your advertising out for free. Wide audiences can and will find your videos, and if they are good enough they will be shared and spred. I haven't bought a game other then elemental in the last 5 or so years with out doing most of the following
1) reading reviews
2) looking at game play videos
3) playign a demo if available
Reviews at the moment are mostly negative, hopefully with he coming patch that will be fixed, but a lot of places probably wont alter their reviews.
The game play videos by the company releasing the game are below par
Hopefully the demo will be amazing bug free and draw in a lot of new customers, but you need the top two points to get their attestation, unfortunately as Joss Whedon knows all too well, a loyal fan base with a large driving for word of mouth dosent = sales out side of it.
Bad sound distortion. I know you like to keep things to the miniun on the editing and to keep it real, but a three level recording is most likely needed here.
Directly captuer the games sound, so that it can be turned up and down if needed during the video and so it comes though at 100% awsom.
Record what you are saying as you talk it though, then re-record it and combine it with the game sounds, to give it a more profesional sound, that will also allow you to work on the next problem.
Adlibed scripts, they could be a bit more polished, but keep the original intent just by re-recordign with out a lot of the umms, errs and parts where it seems that your trian of though can derail.
"displays" of features that dont work and pointing out flaws.
If something inst working, and should be, its rather bad to put up a video talking up that point, only to not be able to see it. Pointing out flaws is the curse of being a grate artist. You see them, they hurt you, and you are striving for perfection, but we don't need to have them pointed out in minute details, many ppl out there wouldn't even notice them.
I was thinking a cross between that and Long Duk Dong from Sixteen Candles "What's happenin' hot stuff?"
edit: Heh, knew I should have finished reading the thread first, I see AM_Shark beat me to it.
Hi Guys,
Glad to see the work progressing but I was wondering if we could have an optional ground level tile shadow for the cursor, to help us to know here we are over exactly i've had soem issues with it previously, especially in combat.
I thought I was the only one that saw that movie!
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